Hockey is a fast moving sport requiring skill, agility, and strategy. While once confined to northern climates, improved refrigeration and air conditioning equipment have made hockey an activity which is enjoyed nationwide and the development of inline skates. The widespread popularity of hockey now draws from a wide pool of players of ever greater natural gifts. In order to stay competitive, aspiring players must not only play the game frequently, but must undergo ever more vigorous training. The players of a hockey team work together to score a goal by striking a hard round rubber puck with a hockey stick into the opponent's goal. The scoring of a goal is opposed by the other team's players on the ice, in particular the goaltender who tries to prevent the entrance of the puck into the delimited goal.
During the course of a game, the puck is maneuvered by a single offensive player or passed between offensive players from the same team in order to get in a position to shoot the puck towards the goal. At the same time, defensive players are trying to take the puck away from the offensive players or at least prevent the puck from traveling towards the goal. The defensive player does this either by maneuvering the puck with his stick or by physically removing the puck from the offensive player's possession by blocking him against the outer boards defining the playing area or by knocking him off his feet. The goaltender, who is positioned in front of the goal, works to prevent the puck from entering the goal by blocking it or catching it with a glove. The pace of the game is very fast and thus it is important that a player have the ability to move and react quickly, both in maneuvering the puck and when positioning himself to shoot the puck towards the goal.
It is an important skill, therefore, both for the goaltender in preventing a goal, and for the player in shooting a goal, to be able to quickly recognize all of the possible angles that a puck could travel to successfully score from any position in front of the goal. This skill allows a player to recognize where to aim and shoot the puck and allows the goaltender to recognize where to best position himself in front of the net to prevent the puck from getting into the goal. Ideally, players should have an immediate mental image of the possible paths a puck may take when hit by a player at any given position with respect to the goal. Some positions to the sides of the goal provide a much narrower apparent entrance to the goal, for example, while positions directly in front of the goal yield a large range of possible entry paths.
In order to teach this skill, hockey coaches have used one or more nylon ropes or similar cords which have been tied to the goal and are either held by a person in front of the goal or wrapped around a hockey stick that was held in front of the goal. Laid out on the ice the cords enclose a region designating possible puck trajectories from a particular shooting position. While helpful, this approach is somewhat static and requires many manual adjustments to be made to the rope to change its length in order to show the angles from positions at different distances from the goal. Such adjustments require either having to change the rope completely, retying the rope to the goal and the hockey stick, or a cumbersome coiling of the rope as the stick is moved. Unfortunately, training techniques which are time-consuming and burdensome to deploy will be employed less frequently than desired. Typically, little time is taken during practice sessions to teach young players to recognize these regions. Instead it is hoped that a player will merely acquire this skill after accumulating years of experience during actual game play.
What is needed is a device for teaching hockey positioning skills which is effective and easy to use.